Collins will savour survival fight

May 23 2009 by Steve Brown, The Journal

While his team-mates would like to be safe in mid-table, Danny Collins will relish the final bid for survival. Steve Brown reports

HE would, unsurprisingly, prefer to be slugging things out at the other end of the Premier League table, while team-mates have expressed envy at the innocuous, end-of-season comfort the likes of West Ham and Wigan can enjoy.

For Danny Collins, though, tomorrow can be savoured. It will be fraught with tension, for sure. But Collins craves a big game, something to play for. And boy is there that.

Win, draw or even lose against Chelsea at the Stadium of Light and, depending on results at Villa Park and the KC Stadium, Sunderland can retain their top-flight status for another term.

It is, as Collins (pictured right) points out, in the Black Cats’ claws and, he insists, with team spirit unchecked by Kenwyne Jones’ post-Portsmouth dissent, something to be relished.

“It’d be nice to be playing in a game going for the title, or for Europe at the other end of the table!” said Collins.

“If you asked most of the lads they’d probably take Wigan or West Ham’s place now, sitting in that mid-table comfort zone. But at least you can sort of say we’ve got something to play for at the end of the season. It’s (been) a nervous few days waiting for the game to come round, where’d we’d perhaps like to get it done and out of the way and move on.

“We’ve had a few days after the disappointment of Monday night but we’ll put that to bed and look forward to the Chelsea game.

“We played some good stuff at times (at Portsmouth), created 10, 15 chances, as we did at Bolton the week before. We didn’t take them, and where at Bolton we didn’t concede, this week we have.

“We were creating good chances but to concede a minute after we scored was the disappointing thing. Then the second one’s a mistake, it knocked the stuffing out of us and we didn’t really look like coming back from there.

“We pushed on in the last five minutes and they hit us again. Once we went in front I thought we would go on and win it at a canter. So it was disappointing but looking back it certainly wasn’t a 3-1 game. That’s football.”

So it is, and so it was that with yet another stab at salvation slipping through Sunderland’s fingers, Jones responded by revealing relegation could spell his exit. Nice timing Kenwyne but, Collins maintained, no biggie. “All season team spirit and unity’s been pretty good,” he said. “We’ve got some vocal characters, everyone’s different. Anton (Ferdinand) is good like that, Kenwyne’s quite lively, we’ve got characters who keep the lads going.